The first to break silence was Luscinda, who thus addressed Don Fernando: “Leave me, Senor Don Fernando, for the sake of what you owe to yourself; if no other reason will induce you, leave me to cling to the wall of which I am the ivy, to the support from which neither your importunities, nor your threats, nor your promises, nor your gifts have been able to detach me.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Now Charles's Isle not only resembles Barrington Isle in being much more inhabitable than other parts of the group, but it is double the size of Barrington, say forty or fifty miles in circuit.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

In spite of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he was quite like a child in all matters save what had some reference to his own business; he seemed, unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than as people in want of tombstones, and his literary attainments evidently comprehended very little either of prose or poetry which had not at one time or other been inscribed on slate or marble.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The passion for a large and permanent population in the universe is not obviously rational; at a great distance a man must view everything, including himself, under the form of eternity, and when life is so viewed its length or its diffusion becomes a point of little importance.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

You, who win money and revenge, at the same time and by the same process, and who are, at all events, sure of money, if not of revenge; or I, who am only sure of spending money in any case, and can but win bare revenge at last?’ As Mr. Squeers could only answer this proposition by shrugs and smiles, Ralph bade him be silent, and thankful that he was so well off; and then, fixing his eyes steadily upon him, proceeded to say: First, that Nicholas had thwarted him in a plan he had formed for the disposal in marriage of a certain young lady, and had, in the confusion attendant on her father’s sudden death, secured that lady himself, and borne her off in triumph.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

“Can you really have put off coming all this time simply to train the dog?” exclaimed Alyosha, with an involuntary note of reproach in his voice.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him to sound the infernal note, and it is not on record that her motive for discharging such a shaft had been of the clearest.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

The reference by the original to “which the Romans call ‘color’” indicates, according to Brandt, that this formula is NOT of ROMAN origin but probably a translation into Latin from a Greek cookery book.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

I am weary and in need of rest, but a burden on my soul deprives me of sleep.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

It was their vocation to be sensitively alive to all the influences, near or remote, by which their native land could be affected.
— from The Preacher and His Models The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 by James Stalker

"— Id. "I need only refer here to Voss's excellent account of it."— Id. "The beginning of Stesichorus's palinode has been preserved.
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

These are great and admirable conquests of the human intelligence, they have demonstrated the first appearance and the progressive evolution of living beings; it now only remains for us to explain them.
— from The Mechanism of Life by Stéphane Leduc

There are two other breeds which come true to colour, but differ in no other respect, namely silver-greys and chinchillas.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — Volume 1 by Charles Darwin

And these sweet days shall shine back in the distance, Like dreams of summer dawns, in nights of rain.
— from Poems of Pleasure by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The thought is not of ritual prescription, but of moral rule.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans by H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn) Moule

What if no one recognized her on that lonely plantation!
— from Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Nor, when thus driven to make a show of mastering his aversion, is there any thing mean or cringing in the way he does it: his language is not only reluctant and reserved, but is even made severe with a dash of irony: "When I consider What great creation and what dole of honour Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now The praisèd of the King ."
— from Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. With An Historical Sketch Of The Origin And Growth Of The Drama In England by Henry Norman Hudson

Our common wild crane's-bill, which also has lost the power to fertilize itself, not only ripens first the outer, then the inner, row of anthers, but actually drops them off after their pollen has been removed, to overcome the barest chance of self-fertilization as the stigmas become receptive.
— from Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Neltje Blanchan